France

Dieudo Hamadi was born in Kisangani (Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1984, and studied medicine in 2005-2008. He then attended several documentary workshops. Hamadi is the author of two short documentaries, Ladies in Waiting and Zero Tolerance that caught the attention of festivals in Europe (Berlin, Paris, and Amsterdam) and North America (Toronto). Ladies In Waiting received the Pierre and Yolande Perrault scholarship at Cinema du Réel (Paris) in 2009. In 2013, Atalaku, his first feature-length documentary about the 2011 election campaign in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, won the Joris Ivens award for best first film, Best Foreign Film at the San Diego Black Film Festival (USA), the Jury Prize at FIDADOC (Agadir, Morocco) and three other awards. In 2014, National Diploma received both the International Prize of the SCAM and the Potemkin award at Cinéma du Réel (France), and was selected at TIFF (Toronto) and nearly 60 festivals worldwide. In 2015, Mama Colonel, his latest film, received assistance in post-production from the Sundance Institute and IDFA Bertha Fund.

Claude Lanzmann (1925–2018) was a French journalist, writer, and film director best known for Shoah (1985), a nine-and-a-half-hour documentary on the Holocaust. As a teenager he joined the French Resistance and fought against the Nazis. After WWII, he studied philosophy at the University of Tübingen, later taught at the Free University, and began writing for Le Monde on the persistence of Nazism. Lanzmann directed several films on the Holocaust and Israel, using firsthand interviews to construct his narratives. His distinctions include the Resistance Medal with rosette, Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour, and Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit. Lanzmann is one of the few French intellectuals and artists of international stature whose body of work left its mark on millions of viewers all over the world. His memoirs, The Patagonian Hare was published in 2009.

François-Xavier Drouet gratuated in political sciences and anthropology, and worked as a reporter before pursuing a degree in creative documentary filmmaking at Lussas. He travelled the world with his first film, The Initiation and co-wrote Gangster Project.